Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Monday March 05, 2007 @03:52PM
from the get-what-you-pay-for dept.

Coryoth writes "While California is suffering from critical shortage of mathematics and science teachers, Kentucky is considering two bills that would give explicit financial incentives to math and science students and teachers. The first bill would provide cash incentives to schools to run AP math and science classes, and cash scholarships to students who did well on AP math and science exams. The second bill provides salary bumps for any teachers with degrees in math or science, or who score well in teacher-certification tests in math, chemistry and physics. Is such differentiated pay the right way to attract science graduates who can make much more in industry, or is it simply going to breed discontent among teachers?"

Whereas this will, undoubtedly, create discontent, I personally support anything that gives teachers more money and students more incentive to do better.

Teachers work their asses off and mould students to be the leaders of tomorrow. Isn't that worth more than a pittance?
As someone who is self-taught in computers (now a *nix Systems Admin), I loathed Math in HS because I saw little point to it. I was never explained 'why' math can be interesting, and it hurt me when i wanted to take CS a few years aft

Some teachers work their asses off. And those teachers deserve to be paid more than the ones that don't. As I understand it, that is not the way it is now and teacher's unions go crazy whenever somebody tries to change it.

As the husband of a teacher, the problem is the teachers are too overworked with bureaucracy. They are controlled to the point where they can't even make their lesson plans cover all the material required. My wife has to have each kid on a computer with some program for 45 minutes 3 times a week. She has 19 kids and 2 computers, and it's really just not possible without sacrificing other lessons. That, and she has been told she can only spend 30 minutes on Social studies or Science each day. Yes, that's an OR, she can't do both. The rest is reading and math (this is 3rd grade). And don't get me started on the No Child Left Behind bullshit. Teachers are not teachers anymore, they are babysitters.

Teachers are not teachers anymore, they are babysitters.This sentence was not only relavent to the issue in the article, but is characteristic of so many of the problems with our education system right now from parents expecting schools to raise their kids and teach them values to our failing grades compared with the rest of the world. I don't think that its just the bureaucracy of structured classes, but with the teachers' lack of ability to control a classroom. Of course, that's a whole other can of worms.

Yes, that is a huge can of worms.

My father has been a teacher for almost 20 years, and describes the life cycle of a teacher like this:

1. Someone becomes a teacher, not for the pay, but in order to better the world.2. They are very enthusiastic, and spin their wheels with enthusiasm.3. About 5-10 years into it, they get cynical. But with that many years behind them, they are not going to switch careers.

He also discussed the government programs issue:

1. A program is created and deployed with high hopes (except for the cynical teachers who have been through the last 3 programs.)2. It generates a lot of (fake) steam, then is loopholed and "special-ed"ed out of commission, at which point everybody forgets the name.3. The program is about to expire, and everything will go back to traditional mode. This creates a lawsuit hazard, as tens of thousands of students suddenly must pass a test or miss their diploma.4. A new program is hastily implemented to keep the scores inflated and keep to the students rolling through (read: no lawsuits).

Another problem is "special ed". Here is the story behind 85% of the students in special ed:

1. A student is ultra-lazy and isn't passing.2. Parents roar at the teacher, and send their kid to the school shrink. At this point the student pays attention and dons his worst intellect, in order to pass the evaluation.3. He is assigned a monitor who is specially responsible to keep an eye on his school (read: make sure he passes).4. The student has a lot less work to do (the basic package is 1/2 the homework, and it gets worse as you go along), and the teacher is given a dossier (they have some politically correct name for it) on the kid's "condition", and he is required to tailor his lessons for that child's benefit. (There is naturally no way a teacher can tailor the class for a dozen individual kids.)5. The student passes with good grades, and gets his diploma. He got by with minimal work, the parents are happy, and nobody got sued.5. Since you can't discriminate against the handicapped or retarded, the diploma has no mention of the fact that the student didn't actually do the work, or that he has any condition.

Now, the program does do much good for the truly handicapped people, but there are very few people who have anything wrong with them, except for their work ethic.

As for classroom discipline:

1. You cannot touch or search a kid without getting sued by the parents or the ACLU.2. You cannot dock their grade without the parents getting zealous.3. You may only send them to the office, where the overworked principle (who spends "half his time making sure we comply with regulations") tells the student to behave or face staying home from school (sounds silly, but it really irks the parents, who suddenly have a kid to babysit).4. If the teacher saw the kid's drugs, the principle calls the students mom to come (no way will he tell the kid to drop his pants for a search without a parent present). The kid is then sent to the school police officer, and I don't know what he does with him.5. There isn't much else to do.

It is a general case of lazy kids, a lawyer-happy ACLU, terrible parenting, and staggering bureaucratic overhead.

According to salary.com, the median income for a "high school teacher" in the United States is currently either $49839 or $69120 if you include benefits. The Census Bureau reports that in 2005, the median household income (which includes more or less the same set of benefits quoted by salary.com) was $46,326. Do we pay teachers enough? I don't know the answer to that question... but the median teacher is clearly not earning a "pittance" for their time. Perhaps it is a pittance compared to what they might be earning in the private sector, but I don't have enough information to make a decision either way....

From the Wall Street Journal (Friday, February 2, 2007), teachers actually make on average $34.06 an hour. That's a bit more than I make as a Software Engineer in the private sector. The whole reason teacher's salaries look low is that no one counts the massive amounts of time off teachers get (or all the civil servant benefits) that private sector workers can only dream about.
The full article is available here:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.ht ml?id=110009612 [opinionjournal.com]

Are teacher overpaid or underpaid, or have we gotten it just right? Easy enough!

Just look at the supply of teachers - are there enough qualified applicants for an open position at the salary you are offering? If I were an administrator, I would want at least twenty serious applications for a position, of which I could interview five or six and then pick the one who fit best. Are schools getting this many serious applicants?

In most cases, yes. In some cases, they are getting far more applicants than is necessary, indicating that the salary offered is too high. A suburban school posting a job for an elementary position in any decent district will be flooded with applications, normally hundreds and sometimes exceeding a thousand. On the other hand, there are not enough qualified math, science, and special education teachers, as well as teachers willing to teach in troubled rural or urban schools. It is clear from this that any employer besides a public school would cut the pay of elementary teachers and boost the pay of math teachers until qualified people for both positions could be found.

The reason I am not a secondary science teacher today is the poor pay. I make twice as much working as a researcher at a major corporation, and have a job that shuts off at 5pm each day without all the headaches. On the other hand, few elementary or English teachers could make double their teachers' pay. Indeed, few of them could even match it in the private sector.

Colleges and universities do not pay all professors the same. They know how to do it, and prove it can be done. Public schools need to move beyond the silly "all teachers are equal" mindset they have been stuck in for decades. It is killing education.

Teachers also have at least a bachelors degree and usually a masters. IIRC ~22% of the US working population has a bachelors. Check among similarly educated persons and teachers indeed do make less than average.

You do realize the Teacher Union mafia will be coming to get you now, don't you? Sure there are some places where teachers may really be underpaid, but on the whole they are paid about as well as the rest of the population. When you factor in the lifestyle (summer off, winter break), maybe it is not such a bad deal. But just don't say that to any Mom with kids in school, you'll have your balls cut off before you even finish.

> Check among similarly educated persons and teachers indeed do make less than average.

Not really. One Masters degree is not equal to a another. There are far too many incompetents walking around with advanced degrees from education programs to compare them with real degrees. It has always been a truism that "Those who can't do, Teach." but it has never been more true than in today's government schools, only the incompetents who can't hack it anywhere else enter the system or stay in the profession fo

If you look at the university level, professors are certainly not paid the same (it varies a HUGE amount based on field unlike high school teachers).

Professors have to be paid based on the opportunity cost decisions they must make and as such people like phyiscs professors, economics professors, law professors, etc make a lot more money than english, classics, history type professors. This may not seem fair since they both do the same sort of work, teaching classes possibly consisting of the exact same students but you have to think about their other options. A physics professor could make good money in industry instead of teaching and similarily the opportunity cost of a law professor teaching is being a lawyer and the cost to an econ professor of teaching is the possibility of making a ton of money in business/consulting. If you are going get qualified professors in these fields, you are going to have to pay them a wage closer to what they could earn outside of acadamia.

The only reason I see this not being a valid case for high school teachers is that there is a bigger qualification gap. I feel fairly confident that given a curriculum (and I guess the education credits needed to qualify me to do so) I could teach science or algebra to a bunch of 16 year olds or show them how to construct a thesis but I am in no way qualified to be a college professor which would require me to possess a PhD in my field (which usually assumes a masters) and extensive time investment before being granted a real professorship. As a matter of fact, I remember being taught courses in high school by instructers who clearly had not studied the subject they were teaching...

Thus I see why the pay-gap is a legitimate idea but it probobly doesnt apply well enough to high school teachers (who dont necessarily have the qualifications to make the opportunity cost argument valid)

So, wait...teachers of non-science subjects are inherently underqualified? I'm a scientist and I still find that conclusion a tad objectionable. Or were you limiting the conclusion to science teachers alone?

Heh, this reminds me of my 5th grade homeroom teacher. She was teaching us that 1 square meter = 100 square centimeters. I had to draw a diagram to prove to her that she was wrong. When she finally understood she told me that I'm right, but I should sit down and not mention it to the rest of the class.

No you mis-interpret what I say. I was talking about money, not value.

Art is important, but there is generally very little money in it. The money argument is about payment, not value. There is a big distinction. You probably don't pay much for air, and would not pay someone 5 cents for a bucket of air, but if someone held your head underwater you'd soon see that it has a lot of value!

Unless you can find some practical outlet for your art degree (eg. painting, sculpture,...) then you're screwed from a financ

Honestly, you should see what it takes to become a teacher, it isn't much. Most of the people teaching math and science in schools today majored in "education" where they sit around imitating classroom environments. The teachers are college-level but learning math at the same level as they will teach their students. Often the teachers are just one lesson ahead of these kids up to the point where they've taught it so long they just have it memorized. Even then they are good at one subject but to call the

In my undergraduate university, education majors were required to declare a secondary major. While it was true in general that the math/ed majors were less adept with mathematics than the pure math majors, they certainly had the passion, conviction, and skill required to teach mathematics in secondary education. I believe that they were required to take the same mathematics curriculum and they had to pass the Math Praxis before they could teach. These people were not "one lesson ahead" of grade school, but

"Honestly, you should see what it takes to become a teacher, it isn't much."

It is enough to discourage people who have degrees in their fields from entering teaching. Why would I want to sacrifice at least a few years of very good pay just to qualify to become eligible to teach in the field I already have a degree in?

(In MA, at least, you need a teaching certification which requires extra schooling in education to get. Don't know what the rule is in other states.)

My mother is a teacher, a lot of my friends are teachers, and I worked IT at a high school.
I've never seen another profession that whines and complains as much as teachers. It's engrained in their culture. It's how they socialize. They will complain about anything and everything.

You obviously don't work in education. Public schools are run more by politics than credentials and experience. There are lots of people able and willing to teach, but they will not put up with the crap pay and bullshit politics to do it.

I'm pretty sure this is a key factor. As someone who's studied math and various liberal arts and as a former student in a teacher-certification curriculum, I can attest to the fact that the rigmarole educators are put through today is a major turnoff.In the end, I chose to pursue advanced degrees and deal with the bullshit academia has to offer rather than teach at a high school with bored students, apathetic parents, and hostile or incompetent administrators* from the principal all the way to the state's e

I can attest to the fact that the rigmarole educators are put through today is a major turnoff.

I graduated from Texas A&M. Because I was in the electrical engineering program before changing to computer science and there was one non-overlap math class, I actually have more math than needed to be an electrical engineer (and that, I believe, ties for the most math needed for any degree, after math majors of course). So, when I was looking at possibly teaching, I found out that I would have to go back and take some remedial math classes. Sure, a couple semesters of differential equations won't help me with algebra, but to go back for remedial math after having taken years of calculus and applied math just turned me off. I can pass any test they can give me about the subject matter. But unless I go back for the remedial math classes, I can't teach it. What is needed is an easy path for professionals to enter education after years of gathering experience in the real world. Until that path is easy, I'm not going to go back to school for 2 years just to be able to apply for the jobs. They should be seeking me out, not putting up hurdles.

Being knowledgeable and being a good teacher are 2 completely different things. How do I know?Glad you asked,

I'm a PhD student in Mech. Engineering at a top 10 school working through the NSF GK-12 Fellowship program and putting in 30hrs/week at a local school. Believe me when I tell you that being smart and being a good teacher at that level are 2 completely different things and I've been decorated and distinguished as a TA from our undergrads and the department. Middle/High School is a different ball game ENTIRELY.

I've learned to keep my mouth shut when it comes to criticizing our educational system - my advise, donate your time to a local school and you'll quickly learn why you love your job so much. It's dang hard work with very little reward other than the smiles on their faces.

This was after a 3 week (50hr/week) summer intensive course on education - there are education theories out there that make a lot of sense and work. You wouldn't know this because the vast majority of my teachers haven't followed them. There is more to being a good educator then being smart in your field - it requires being knowledgeable in the theories of education also.

That said, I find that the teachers at my school to be extremely petty (maybe it's a catfighting thing) but the politics are horrible and the acknowledgements are nonexistent.

In my small town (as I'm sure it is in many others) the public elects the Board of Education to oversee the system. The Board hires and fires. And this Board is answerable to the voters - who have a right to say "you will do thus-and-so" OR ELSE (you're out).

The majority have the right to petition and, said petition getting the appropriate quantity of signatures, put pretty much whatever topic they want to a referendum vote - a vote that can even do such things as modify (within the state guidelines) the curriculum OR direct the Board to refuse to renew the teacher's union contract and hire teachers independently (as many private schools do) and determine their salaries by an entirely different set of guidelines than the union's "pay us, or else"-type of negotiation.

I'd heard (no, I don't have a source yet but will look for it) that some years ago some small mid-American town DID that and offered to rehire all the teachers at their current level and go by merit afterward.

The union sued, the State said that it's not illegal not to renew a contract (and the Town was willing to hire the teachers independently). The voters made it plain that they would ONLY entertain one-year contracts (apparently it was THAT small a town that they had the luxury) and renegotiate every year "so, you're not gonna get anywhere 'cause we have plenty of teachers willing to work off-contract just to be ABLE to teach".

They weren't trying to bust the union by forcing unionees out of their jobs by hiring replacements, they just didn't want to renew the teachers' "service contract" (i.e. "we will perform [services] for [price]") about the same way you might not want to renew the service contract on your furnace and choose to hire your own qualified individual to maintain it (since fire marshalls and insurance companies are picky about competent labor on such devices).

Apparently a separate committee, unknown to the union, had interviewed and culled individuals with good teaching credentials (either unemployed or employed out-of-field) for potential part-time-leading-to-full-time employment and had non-disclosures to prevent the union from finding out. Can you say "ace-in-the-hole"?

Apparently the union desisted, same teachers, same jobs, many left & were replaced (all were invited to reapply before the independents were allowed to try), on merit pay, the student's scores went up appropriately, the pay went up appropriately, and everyone eventually won except the union-mongers.

Well, I have a Master's in Chemistry, and I'm considering teaching, for a few reasons totally unrelated to those that I've seen here, and a few that have already been mentioned.1. You can be a high school teacher anywhere. I'm finding that almost all pharmaceutical research labs are in the Northeast US. When I graduate, I'll look for research jobs, but I wouldn't take 99% of them because I'd rather be dead than live there.2. You get three months a year off. I've never really gotten over losing my summers to

They're all opinion based. Completion time vs estimation time? Horrible metric- its up to someone's opinion of how it should work. And as a real world metric it fails utterly- estimates are usually made by management, and don't often show spec changes.Number and severity of issues? Number is relative to the complexity of the program (and sometimes wether something is an issue is a matter of opinion). Severity is completely an opinion- some people treat crashes as minor if its random and loses no dat

If there is, as the article suggests, a "critical shortage of mathematics and science teachers" in CA, and that the "problem with advanced math and science is that those with the education to teach it can make a lot more money not teaching it", then it should be painfully obvious that if you wish to correct this "shortage" of talent, you'll need to up the pay scale of math and science teachers to make it an attractive career choice.

Either that, or enslave post-grads for a few years and FORCE them to work at public school wages. That'll work... Yeah.

Is such differentiated pay the right way to attract science graduates who can make much more in industry, or is it simply going to breed discontent among teachers?"

I hate "IS/OR" questions like this. The answer to both is YES. Pay which is competative with industry will attract science grads to teach. It will also cause "discontent among teachers" who somehow feel that all teachers should earn the same -- regardless of education/demand for certain skillsets.

There's a program in my home state of Delaware to provide full/near full scholarships to anyone who goes to college and becomes a teacher, provided they sign a contract saying they'll teach 5 (?) years in the state.

Why not do it for math/science? "No money for college? Just teach some kids for a few years after you're done and we'll foot the bill". Seems like a nice win/win situation.

You know, one of the proponents from the original article makes that very point:"He pointed out that an English teacher doesn't have to be a great writer to teach reading and writing, but that the same is not true of high-end math and science courses."

I think this is an important point. It can be overstated, but real fluency in mathematics can make a great deal of difference to how well it is taught. Most students can appreciate the value of learning to read or write, but will more often tend to question the value of mathematics. It takes a teacher with good mathematical knowledge (often well beyond the level they are teaching) to provide the extra depth to mathematics that can help engage students. Finland noted this around 2000 and set up a series of reforms that saw strong encouragement for elementary school teachers to take advanced math classes. The result is that Finland is now ranked among the very top countries in the world with respect to the achievements of their students in mathematics.

Of course, at the higher levels of English, having a teacher well versed in literature can make all the difference with regard to engaing students in studying Shakespeare and the classics. I don't think you should sell short the value of a well educated English teacher - it is just that that value tends be increase later in schooling rather than earlier.

One doesn't have to be comfortable with math to teach it any more than an english teacher needs to be literate. Teachers have answer books to help them. Unlike english, math is easy for a moron to teach since the answer is either exactly right, or it's wrong. There's no comprehension needed to perform at that level.Sure, it would be nice if the teachers were interested in their field and had some talent/experience. However, when you pay near the bottom of the scale for educated/certified people, you get

One doesn't have to be comfortable with math to teach it any more than an english teacher needs to be literate. Teachers have answer books to help them. Unlike english, math is easy for a moron to teach since the answer is either exactly right, or it's wrong. There's no comprehension needed to perform at that level.

Wow, spoken exactly like someone who's never set foot in a classroom. It would be hard for you to be any more wrong than you are here, buddy. The problem with the teaching profession today is p

If you're talking about teaching simple math, you're probably correct. Most people intuitively understand things like addition and subtraction. The point at where this is no longer valid is when you're talking about teaching advanced math concepts in high school, which is where the real shortage occurs.

Actually I would like to point out that, in fact, simple math can actually be one of the areas where real depth of knowledge can actually make a difference. While most people have some intuitive grasp of simple mathematics, they often don't really understand it - if you pick apart the fundamentals [stuff.gen.nz] you can often find things are not as well understood as you might expect. Even just numbers and simple arithmetic [stuff.gen.nz] have more going on than you might think. A teacher who understands the deeper issues is going to b

Are you telling me you never had a teacher who either didn't know their subject or couldn't communicate with students and used the same overhead transparencies for the last 15 years? They seemed to be plentiful throughout my academic experience. My point is that with math, it is possible to squeak by on just knowing the end result without knowing how to get there.

Ah, but an important point is that mathematics is an incredibly layered subject. New material builds on the previous material in layer upon layer, and that means that if a student falls behind a little, they find themselves unable to catch up as the subject moves on away from them. They are essentially left chasing a horizon they can never quite reach. This is dispiriting and depressing and, to be frank, is much of the reason why so many students hate mathematics. With mathematics one single bad teacher can pretty much end your mathematics career - believe me, I've heard exactly that story from a vast number of people. Other subjects tend to have similar issues, but none are quite as unforgiving in this regard as mathematics. If you don't quite grasp a particular section in English or History your odds of coping with the next section are not appreciably diminished (barring the first couple of years of reading and writing), whil in mathematics it can be exceptionally detrimental. Bad math teachers have a huge impact on students.

My favorite anecdote was my Junior High science teacher who, trying to emphasize how complex the brain is, told us 'There are more brain cells in the brain than atoms in the universe.'I raised my hand and said 'If brain cells are made out of atoms that is clearly impossible.' She disagreed. We argued and I got detention for undermining her in front of the class.

I think the point she was trying to make was that there are more possible interconnections between brains cells in the brain than atoms in the universe, which is still wrong.

Sigh. I wonder how many kids thought I was being a wiseass vs how many realized how stupid the teacher's statement was.

You don't have to be literate to be an English teacher. However, you have to be comfortable with math to teach math.

Let's not go overboard, now. If you want to teach English well, you need to be more than literate, you need to be well-read. If you want to teach anything well, you need to be familiar with the subject. The problem is not that Math and Science teachers need to know more than English teachers, the problem is that the ability to teach reading and understanding is apparently more common than the ability to teach calculus, physics, et cetera.

This should be a simple supply-and-demand problem, just like at the University level. I'm sure my Law professors make a good deal more money than my Philosophy professors, though every indication is that my Philosophy professors had more education and did more actual work. This isn't about who has a harder job or who needs more education; it's about meeting demand by raising the price.

The mental block that teacher's unions apparently have is that public schools are built on the egalitarian notion that everyone deserves a basic education; that a basic education for the greater populace has a value that cannot be quantified. But I have never heard it competently argued that the same principles that extend rudimentary education to every child somehow justify equal pay for every teacher (with allowances made for years of service in a particular district).

I tend to get upset about gross disparities in pay--see any argument about certain CEOs--but there is a clear difference between paying for actual skills and paying because someone occupies a particular "position." I do not think principals, for example, need to make any more money than the teachers they supervise. But if there's a shortage of science and math teachers, we really only have three options: increase pay for the teachers we want, or increase teachers' pay across the board. The second option seems prohibitively expensive.

There actually is a third option: we can cut the requirement that people have teaching certificates to teach. That is a barrier to entry that might, if removed, increase the supply of teachers sufficiently. But that is a totally different argument, and one that might be even more controversial than raising pay for teachers of certain subjects.

The problem is that a person with a science or math degree can get a job that pays 40-80K right out of college, where a teacher's salary starts around 30 and doesn't really go much higher than that.

You need to keep in mind that teachers do not work 40+ hours/week and they get the summers off. Pay rate would be better expressed in dollars per hour. My wife is an English teacher (a damn good one too!) and I'm a sofware engineer. My yearly salary is more than twice hers, but if you count the hours (counting 50hrs/week for me) she gets better pay per hour.

You need to keep in mind that teachers do not work 40+ hours/week and they get the summers off.

You do make a good point about the time off. I've got a friend who's the IT guy at a private high school and he basically works 9-4 with an hour (free) lunch and gets 8 weeks of vacation through the year. His pay is a little sub-par for what he does and has to deal with, but it's an alright gig. With that much available time off, it's easy to work a second job or even go for more schooling/training.

The problem is that a person with a science or math degree can get a job that pays 40-80K right out of college, where a teacher's salary starts around 30 and doesn't really go much higher than that.You need to keep in mind that teachers do not work 40+ hours/week and they get the summers off. Pay rate would be better expressed in dollars per hour. My wife is an English teacher (a damn good one too!) and I'm a sofware engineer. My yearly salary is more than twice hers, but if you count the hours (counting 50hrs/week for me) she gets better pay per hour.

Your right, teachers don't work 40 hours per week. On a typical day, I am at school from 7 am to 3 pm (8 hours x 5). Every Tuesday there is a staff meeting, lasting about an hour. I also have students stay after school until around 4 at least once a week, especially if we have a test the following day. Then I get to go home and spend time grading, writing lesson plans, creating assignments, etc., all of which work out to about 6 hours per week. So that brings me pretty close to your 50 hours per week.

As for summers off, keep in mind that most (good) teachers use that time to further their own education, whether its working towards the Master's degree that you are required to obtain within 5 years, or taking addition subject courses to enhance the students' experiences and expand the number of courses the teacher can teach.

What people not in the education field also do not take into account is the sheer exhaustion that comes from teaching. Imagine having to give a 45 minutes presentation to 25 co-workers every day. Now imagine doing it 4-5 times per day. And keep in mind, it has to be a DIFFERENT presentation every day. And it damn well better be entertaining...and interactive...and inquiry-based.

In conclusion, this comment is not the ranting of a disgruntled teacher who feels the world owes him a big "thank you". I love teaching and, at least right now, can't think of anything else I'd rather do for a career. I just want to try to set the record straight on how much work goes into "getting summers off".

The problem is not teacher's pay. The problem is the fact that the teachers who are actually trying dont get any additional money.I know plenty of teachers who do just the status quo and no more. They get to school at 7:45, and leave at 3:15. They probably do about a half hour per day of work at home. They get an hour lunch break and therefore only work about 35 hours a week. Their first year or two are tough, but after that they have worked out their lesson plans and have little left to do outside of

False. My wife (8th grade teacher) gets to work at 7:25 and leaves usually at 4:00. She usually spends an average of 1 hour every night doing extra work. Her lunch hour is about 40 minutes. That adds up to 50 hours a week when you include the extra weekend work.

...and they get the summers off

True. Almost three months is a LOT of vacation. I'd say she gets 14 weeks off over the course of a year. That translates to 560 hours of a 40 hour week.

Now, consider that 50 hours a week times the 38 weeks of working = 1900 hours. That brings up a net difference of 100 hours of extra work I do over the course of a year (assuming standard 2000 hour year). The ratio of her total hours to my total hours (0.95) compared to the ratio of her salary to my salary (software developer) (0.65) is not encouraging.

This proposed system to get better math and science
educators and educations sounds like a meritocracy approach,
which may be a foreign concept to some in the heavily
union-controlled teacher community. It would seem that something
as important as the education of our children the most
important goal would be to fund and organize the most
effective educational system possible.

While I don't know the intricacies of the teachers' unions,
I've had enough discussions with my sister, a teacher, to suspect
the best interests of the children are rarely in play in
decsions around who should teach and how much those who teach
should be paid. If this is really true, it is probably the wrong
approach.

A central tenet of the school pay system appears to be their
main stumbling block: FTA:

Like all Kentucky public
school districts, Beechwood has a set pay scale for teachers
based on experience. There is no differential pay for teaching
tougher or less-desirable courses.

There's a certain insanity to the notion that different
demand-disciplines (in the market workplace) should not help
guide salary distribution in the teaching systems. High-demand,
high-pay disciplines should drive high-pay teaching positions.
If an English teacher's 50% cut to a Physics teacher's pay
bothers the English teacher, he (she) need only get the necessary
background to qualify to teach physics. It seems like a simple
equation... it's kind of (not exactly) how it works in the job
market.

I'm all for a meritocracy for teachers, and not just in the
math and sciences. Unfortunately, from past observations, as
long as government runs educational systems, and unions govern
teacher selection, the "finest education" for the children is
likely the last result we'll see.

Want to place odds on whether Kentucky pulls off getting these
bills passed? And, if passed, want to double down on the
teachers' unions' resistance? That said, good luck to
Kentucky... I hope they pull it off.

Performance is a hard thing to measure. Qualifications are a measure of a minimum skill set, often at a particular point in time. When you try to measure performance, people tend to maximize for the criteria being measured, even if it's counterproductive to doing their primary job.

Teachers get rated based on how their students do on standardized tests, so they teach students to be good at the test, regardless of how relevant that information is outside of the test. People complain about teaching to the test, but insist on metrics that require some manner of measurement. It's a catch 22.

This is even worse since the teachers get no choice in their students. How would you feel if your performance was based on your ability to get a bunch of goldfish to do math?

I'm all for rating people based on their performance, but in practice it always comes down to something documented clearly in such a brain dead manner that people aren't afraid of being sued. Once that happens, it becomes very difficult to see the difference between someone who is really good at their job and someone who is good at gaming the system.

A central tenet of the school pay system appears to be their main stumbling block

That's a stumbling block of *all* unionized workplaces. Instead of paying people based on their performance they pay everyone based on their years in.

This type of reward system creates an environment that's filled with indifference. "Why should I work hard and come up with new and exciting lesson plans when I'm going to be paid exactly the same as Bob Smith who sits on his tenured ass and doesn't engage the students at all?"

It's a real problem where I used to work and it was compounded with supervisors that have limited budgets and individuals used to receiving their yearly raises and not looking for upward advancement. So you have people that do nothing more than the bare minimum, don't have any goals, and are just happy to be great at making themselves look busier than they really are while complaining that Joe is working hard and making them look bad.

This proposed system to get better math and science educators and educations sounds like a meritocracy approach

...until you consider the fact that they want to base their salaries on the performance of their class.

There are several problems with this idea. The first, and most serious in my mind (but I am Not a Teacher, I have only discussed this with some of them) is that this will be based on standardized testing. As we all (should) know, testing is actually a poor indicator of future performance. Some p

(One stray thought let to another. =))> he (she) need only get the necessary background to qualify to teach physics.

The requirements go down when there's a shortage, of course, so this isn't as hard as it sounds. Of course, to be honest, with the exception of a few particular courses--some AP stuff, advanced language stuff, and I suppose music--an intelligent person should be able to teach any high school course. (Based on the difficulty of high school courses at my school in the late 90s, and given a

Depending on how this is funded, it may backfire. If the state is paying the salary difference directly, that may work, but otherwise school districts will avoid hiring teachers who qualify for the extra pay to keep within budget. The system already makes it quite difficult for experienced teachers to get jobs; my wife was once told by a principal that he would love to hire her, but the superintendent said he would only approve up to three years of experience.

The teachers union mandates certain pay levels at certain years of experience. You can't take less money just to get hired, even if you wanted to.This may be seen as a union problem, but I see it more as a school budget problem. Schools don't have enough money, and they don't allocate enough of the money they do have to teacher salaries.

Good teachers are in high demand and short supply, which in a normal business would result in higher pay. However, with teaching there's some sort of nonsense myth that t

This may be seen as a union problem, but I see it more as a school budget problem. Schools don't have enough money, and they don't allocate enough of the money they do have to teacher salaries.

It's both. Schools don't have enough money, and the unions force them to spend their money in inappropriate, unfair ways. Mr. Bob who has taught half-assedly for ten years makes vastly more than Mr. Jim who has taught with all his effort for five years, and is actually helping children. It's not a meritocracy, it's P

EXACTLY! Not everyone should go to college. I know far to many "business" majors, or "communications" majors who leave college after 4-5 years of drunkenness (see face-book...) with a huge student loan and expect to earn 50K+ per year. Then the reality of the marketplace hits like a ton of bricks and you have these 'grads' earning a bit above minimum wage working retail or something unrelated to their college education.

There is an unhealthy stigma that goes along with people not going to college, and I disagree with it. College, while wonderful for some, is not good for others. 2 year trade schools, or apprenticeships should be encouraged far more than they are. And this is relevant to the topic because the students are told by their teachers that if they don't go to college, they will be useless to society. (or at least thats how I was taught)

There is a problem with the teaching system in the United States, and it starts with the students being far too empowered. If little Johnny does something wrong, teacher (rightly!) punishes Johnny, he cries to Mommy, and Mommy sides with Johnny. Teacher's hands are tied and so they stop caring. I have plenty of friends that are teachers, and this is a common story. There are more problems, but I firmly believe that the problem originates at discipline.

There is a problem with the teaching system in the United States, and it starts with the students being far too empowered. If little Johnny does something wrong, teacher (rightly!) punishes Johnny, he cries to Mommy, and Mommy sides with Johnny. Teacher's hands are tied and so they stop caring. I have plenty of friends that are teachers, and this is a common story. There are more problems, but I firmly believe that the problem originates at discipline.

Teachers face the same hurdles that you may experience in the IT field. Most of us have been in the position where you ae looking to take on a job that you are more than qualified for. You get the "We think you are overqualified for this position", which translates to "You are bound to want too much money". The same applies to teachers.

Is such differentiated pay the right way to attract science graduates who can make much more in industry, or is it simply going to breed discontent among teachers?

I most certainly believe so. In the general workforce, this is generally the case. Those with degrees in English, who sit typing manuals all day generally don't get paid as well as engineers do. So, the schools would have to compete with the differing pay scales accordingly.

In general, I do believe teachers are vastly underpaid. However, a Mat

We already spend a shit load of money on education and the results are poor at best. So what do we do? Spend more money of course! I think the US needs to look at other cultures to see how its done. We're obviously missing something and it definitely isn't money.

The highest educated populations in the western world are the Scandinavian countries. There, motherhood, childcare, and educational professions are looked upon as great callings that have a huge influence on the future prosperity of the country. Therefore, it's easy to justify paying them well.

In the US, it seems that most valuable female is the one who looks like a dirty catholic schoolgirl and the most valuable male is the one who can best jump on top of other males in the mud while wearing tights. Teachers and child care workers are looked down upon as lazy.

The highest educated populations in the western world are the Scandinavian countries. There, motherhood, childcare, and educational professions are looked upon as great callings that have a huge influence on the future prosperity of the country. Therefore, it's easy to justify paying them well.

Eh. I live here. In Denmark. Teacher's base pay is a little above unskilled worker's, though it raises slightly more quickly. Childcare, less so. Motherhood? These are the countries of equal opportunity. At best, motherhood is regarded as a nice hobby if you don't overindulge. (Fatherhood, I'm pleased to say, is getting increased respect these days --- at this rate, it might approach the mother ditto in 30 or 40 years).

However, there is no shortage of teachers or childcarers in most regions, the exceptio

Is such differentiated pay the right way to attract science graduates who can make much more in industry, or is it simply going to breed discontent among teachers?

More competitive pay may attract science grads who could make more elsewhere, but I'd argue that it's worthwhile to avoid breeding discontent by giving all teachers that same raise. They certainly deserve it for all the extra hours a teacher puts in grading, preparing lessons, and other "homework." Counting all that, my teacher friends put i

I'd like to be a teacher. Some of the greatest influences on my life have been teachers. I like teaching kids science and computers, and I've got a talent for it.

But I'll never be a teacher under current systems.

I'm not patient with kids who don't get it and insist on me walking them through everything. None of my favorite teachers were either. I'm not respectful of authority either, unless it's earned that respect. None of my favorite teachers were either. And if parents insist that little Taylor or Brittany didn't earn the C they got on the test, I'll tell them where they can shove their complaints. And I'm not about to waste my time teaching kids for a test. Some of the best lessons in life can't be tested. I'd reward kids for creativity, an inquisitive nature, the questioning of current thinking, and for making me look dumb. All the kinds of things my favorite teachers rewarded me for.

I feel that, in this current climate, I wouldn't last a year as that kind of teacher. In fact, two of my favorite teachers got fired after I had them because of complaints and friction with the administration. And they were replaced with robots designed to make more robots. Indeed, most of the teachers I remember fondly only lasted as long as they did because they produced results despite friction with the administration and parents.

I'm not patient with kids who don't get it and insist on me walking them through everything.

Good thing you are not a teacher. What you are saying that you could do that job only when it's easy. Anyone can.

Being able to control, teach and inspire kids that are not at all interested in the subject is something that a great teacher can do. That's where the art of teaching comes in.

I taught computer programming adults who were quite motivated to learn. This was a piece of case. My wife teaches engilish to 7th graders in an urban school. After few months all her students love her and many learn to love literature. Teaching in that environment is a completely different skill.

Good thing you are not a teacher. What you are saying that you could do that job only when it's easy. Anyone can.

I can relate to the GP. Why is it my problem that the student can't study? If I give an algorithm to solve some problem (be it math, science, English, foreign language, etc.), at the high school level, I should presume that the student has the ability to record and apply the algorithm. If they don't understand the why, I can help. If I show them once, and they can't do it themselves in a me

Pay is a serious issue with teaching (I won't even get started on the rest of the issues).

"Is such differentiated pay the right way to attract science graduates who can make much more in industry, or is it simply going to breed discontent among teachers?"

Science and Math are good starting points. But don't stop there!The entire United States Educational System needs a complete overhaul.

Teachers should teach because they enjoy it. Being "attracted" into it isn't going to make them be good teachers. In fact, it may turn out like college where you get the really bright mathematicians and scientists teaching, but they can't relate worth a darn to the students.

Money is also a good start. Really talented people end up leaving the profession because they simply can't pay the bills. Making the pay more competitive will keep more of the good teachers. Fixing some of the other problems will also retain teachers, but getting the teachers in, paying them better and teaching (or allowing) them to be good teachers is what needs to happen, nation-wide, not just Kentucky or California.

The overhaul must start somewhere, and if they look at pay first, that's great. You can eventually weed out the poor teachers, keep the good teachers and our children will finally have an education they deserve!! (Without having to move overseas to truly educate them well.)

So, it's a start. But it can't stop there. Yes, there will be discontent among teachers but once the ball starts rolling and things improve for one and all, then everyone wins.

The part that disturbs me here is the implicit understanding that our non math/science teachers are 'good enough' as they are, and we needn't get more proficient teachers in all subjects via said financial incentives. Aren't there articles written every month about things like how a majority of high school seniors have such poor reading skills that they can't read a train schedule effectively?

This is not, of course, to say that the majority of teachers aren't apt. They probably are. But give them 16-18 s

The US NEEDs more math and science teachers, especially good ones. The rest of the world exceeds in these fields more than our younger generation can. With politics messing things up in the science classroom about creationism over evolution, it is a huge step backward and will definitely damage our country's reputation for being the mecca of new technology research.I do know of some math teachers who used to work for Lockheed Martin and they were really focused on making sure every teen in their classroom.

One of the problems this will encourage is that these days parents *expect* their kids to be in AP classes even if they're not qualified to be there. I recently judged a high school science fair, and it was pretty plain that most students didn't even do the minimum, a few just checked off the boxes, and very, very few really tried to do the work required for science.

The first thing that needs to happen is that AP classes need to not be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator because of political reasons, and everyone shouldn't get a pony- we have to get back to having kids *lose* if they don't make the cut.

Won't it create shortages in other states potentially? They have to be attracted from somewhere? If you waited for the teachers presently in the state to upgrade, it would probably take too long. Sounds to me like the recipe for cannibalization of the school system.

As far as I've been able to determine from friends and family in the teaching profession, the problem isn't so much compensation as it is walnut-brained administrators and parents.If you make schools immune to civil lawsuits, put teachers ahead of parents and stop appointing the retarded friends and family of politicians as school administrators, you will have a functioning school system again. Parents that don't like that situation can take their kids to private school or home school them.

My wife teaches middle school science in Northern Kentucky. Just consider the following a general complaint. We're pretty disappointed with the district she works for, to the point of considering private school for our kids. A couple of reasons: The district is cutting out AP courses. Maybe it was to qualify for the cash to start a program. They are also cutting teacher positions (including science) because of a budget shortfall. Lastly, she may get shifted from science to special-ed. Why? Because she has two masters degrees and is certified in Science, Language Arts, and Special-Ed. So even though she loves teaching science, has students that write poems about what a great teacher she is, she may not get to decide what subject she teaches. If there's a shortage of teachers in any subject, it's special ed.

The central planning of the Soviet Union came up with a new economic plan every five years.

That Kentucky (or any state in the U.S.) applies the same logic to education is no surprise, but why do Slashdotters acquiesce to determining teachers' salary by central planning and government mandate? The free market should determine teachers' salaries. The prerequisite, of course, would be to eliminate government-run schools and let private schools compete for tuition money from parents.

I work for public education, and get to visit many a classroom and the thought of putting my kid in a public school scares the crap out of me so much, that my kids don't go to public school, they attend a homestudy charter school. Both will graduate High School with upto two years of college credits, something not even offered in public schools.

I've seen good and bad teachers in the schools I work in, and quite frankly, there aren't enough good teachers. Period. Like the teacher who was teaching life lessons from the master "Rikki Lake" (No kidding). Or the Social Science Teacher teaching made up crap and opinions as "fact". Or the Math teacher who didn't know the formula for the area of a circle (No kidding), Or the teacher that has four computers on his desk and that is all he does all day, instead of teaching the special education kids in his charge, or.....

It is pretty scary stuff, if you ask me. The scariest part is that NONE of the teachers I mentioned could be fired, because the Union says so. It is clear that the Union doesn't really care about their profession, or it would be EMBARRASSED of many of its members.

I feel really sorry about those teachers that are actually good. However, they cannot overcome the crap coming from the worst of them. Sad, but true.

I've sometimes considered teaching, but after seeing what a relative went through when earning her teaching certificate, there's no way in hell I'd do it under the current system.

At least in her classes, the students were apathetic and disrespectful. In her assessment, basically zero learning occurred.

Contrast that to what I get when I teach my kids at home. We snuggle up and read a homeschooling book about astronomy, and they actually learn. We pop in a "Magic Schoolbus" DVD rental, and even I learn stuff about human physiology, etc. My 6 year old knows multiplication table up through 7's, and reads at a 3rd-grade level.

Seeing the heartbreaking gap between what most kids can learn, and what most kids do learn in public school, keeps me from ever wanting to perpetuate that environment. I'm considering working with small groups of kids and possibly even doing some math teaching to home-schooled kids. But public schools - no way. It's mostly a waste.

No one gets into this for the money, and no one stays for the money -- not math teachers, anyway. I did something before this that paid twice as much, as many of us do, but then I got bored and decided to try this.

So the issue is, if people aren't in teaching for the money, why do we suspect that we'll be able to attract more people to teaching with more money?

Now, there's the reasonable argument that there's some segment of the population that would like to teach, but can't because the pay is so low, but there's two things wrong with this argument:

1. teachers are never going to make as much as, say, modelers or programmers, and2. i have some reason to believe that the sort of people who are just waiting for teaching kids to be really, really profitable might not be the crowd that we want to attract, anyway.

People get into teaching because they like teaching. People leave teaching because it's annoying a lot of the time. Here's how you attract people, in my personal fake expert opinion:

1. make it interesting. don't assign people to courses just because they're what's open, and don't make them wait for someone to die to get to try teaching calculus.2. give them support, and help them develop. put time into schedules for conferences and bring in real lecturers, provide journals and during the day time to discuss, and fund coursework into anything.3. throw out the textbooks. they're all shit (with the exception of harold jacobs).4. demand real expertise and professionalism. make math teacher a job that it's hard to get. if i quit tomorrow, i could work anywhere in Maine by next week. this isn't good, rather it tells me that i don't need to be very good -- and if that's true, how good am i, really?

It's a great job, and you can't fix the shortage with money because things are so bad in terms of available teachers that you're just going to drag the good ones to rich districts and force poor schools to take whoever's left -- and you would be pretty surprised if i were to tell you exactly how bad things are in terms of expertise. The right answer is to make it a job that is attractive in all its aspects, and one that's admirable and challenging. That's all we geeks want, anyway, isn't it? A challenge, and some acknowledgement that we've got giant freaking brains?

Let's be honest. Math and science are more important. Period. History is a very close second. We need kids who understand the basics of the scientific method and mathematics so that they know how to solve problems. We need kids who understand history so that the ones who become politicians don't end up fucking thing up as badly as the current crowd has. So yes, math and science teachers should be paid more than the art teachers. And football coaches should be paid less than art teachers.

But really, the problem with education isn't pay-grade differences. It's actually a situation where liberals and conservatives have both come together to fuck things up. The conservatives offer Christian fundamentalist parents to put pressure on school boards to teach creationism or similar frauds, uneducated morons sitting on education boards to decide what is and isn't science and a ridiculous philosophy that free-market capitalism actually applies to education in the form of "No Child Left Behind". Oh yeah, and they have a worrisome trust for standardized test scores as a benchmark for performance.

The liberals, on the other hand, offer hideously overpowered teacher's unions that keep shitty teachers employed, an inane attitude that no kid should ever fail and an unreasonable expectation that every kid should go to college. Really, when did becoming a plumber or electrician become something so terrible? You can make a good, honest living doing plenty of trade jobs. But not every kid belongs in college, and filling colleges with kids who don't belong there sucks resources from actual higher education and diverts it to joke majors like "park and recreation management". And since every kid has to go to college now, they have to have enough majors for everyone!

Because we don't have a shortage of English or History teachers. It's not a bias. It's supply and demand. People with expertise in math and science can find far more lucrative jobs in industry than they can teaching public schools, and without dealing with the kind of idiotic bureaucracy that tends to rule in them, but the same cannot be said of English or history majors. You cannot "increase the complexity of the curriculum" without expertise in the subject matter.